Elad Sofer - LeSS - Large Scale Scrum blog

I often get asked: Why does the certified LeSS Practitioner training require 3 days?I thought it would be beneficial to write a short post explaining.

I understand the question.

I really do. 3 days for a training is not very common for these types of trainings, partly because during the last years, the Scrum Alliance had set the standard for scrum related trainings for 2 days (See CSM , CSPO).

*The original name of this post was “Have some focus to spare?” but since Passover is around the corner it seemed nice to use the famous statement made by Charlton Heston(Moses).

Very often when we detect a problem, we have a tendency is to shift attention to the area where the problem is in an attempt to solve it. Just ask my kids if you don't believe me…This approach, while sometimes useful, overlooks two very important factors: We have a limited amount of focus to distribute & looking at a problem may make it worse.

Prgamatism: a reasonable and logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories [merriam-webster Dictionary]

In my role as an agile coach i often get to meet people and organizations that are considering embarking on their journey towards organizational agility, more often than not these people are seeking a coach that will offer them what they refer to as “pragmatic advice”, they are seeking advice and ideas that are not religious or theoretical, advice that will work it their own company with its own limitations and realities.

When learning about the SAFe methodology one might come to a conclusion that in order to achieve agility in large organizations there is a need to add roles, artifacts, processes, etc. Recently the SAFe institute even published the “SAFe essentials” trying to answer the question “What is the minimum subset of practices beyond which SAFe isn't safe?” and feel free to read it yourself and judge. I would say that the list is far from being minimal.

The common reasoning behind this approach is that the bigger the organization is, the more complex it becomes to effectively align the entire organization towards a shared goal.

I’ve had this thought for a while now of demonstrating how can people and organizations deal with everyday situations and present an analysis of them based on my personal views, while some might find this judgmental, others may find this an interesting reflection of their behavior and explore alternatives.

For the sake of the following scenarios I will assume that we are discussing a Large Scale Scrum product, 6 feature teams, one product owner (That is you!)